I made a promise to myself that every month, I would at least look through the abstracts on my RSS feeds and note interesting articles that I wanted to find time to read. So now it’s May 30, and I’d better do it before the June issues come out.

So… articles in the May issue of Geology that look interesting:

Extensional tectonics: Extension rates, crustal melting, and core complex dynamics. Metamorphic core complexes are made up of metamorphic and igneous rocks that have been brought nearer to the surface by continental extension. They’re characterized by mylonites that separate the hotter, deeper rocks from the colder, shallower (usually brittlely faulted sedimentary) rocks. In some of them, the deep rocks reflect older metamorphism, but in other ones, the rocks partially melted in the process of being exhumed. P. Rey, Christian Teyssier, and Donna Whitney modeled the deformation and crystallization of the core complex rocks, and concluded that the difference reflects differences in strain rates. [Part of me wants to take this work and look at an area near my dissertation field area, and part wonders how the recent paper arguing that heat flow is slower in hot rocks would affect these conclusions.]

Strike-slip structures: Downdip segmentation of strike-slip fault zones in the brittle crust. Where the San Jacinto fault (southern California) jumps from one steep strand to another, slip follows the bedding of weak shale layers. It’s a geometry that isn’t described in textbooks. Worth knowing about. I wonder how common that geometry is?